Could rewarding players for playing your game make them appreciate the game less, and play worse? Chris Hecker doesn't know for sure, but his talk, "Achievements Considered Harmful?," explored the possibility.
I've tried my best to summarize the talk below, but I can't say I've done it justice -- Hecker gave the headiest and most fast-paced talk I've yet heard at GDC 2010.
Hit the jump for that.
Hecker started by admitting that, "when you
do a talk or a paper entitled 'considered harmful,' you're trying to stir shit up." That's kind of what Hecker did, but he wanted the attendees to consider the title of his talk as more of a question: can achievements be harmful? Neither Hecker, nor anybody else, really seems to know.
Most of the academic studies done on the effects of extrinsic rewards on people are contentious, and there just plain haven't been any studies on the long-term effects of Achievements on player behavior. Hecker wasn't trying to definitively prove that Achievements are harmful, but rather to encourage the psychologists and developers in the audience to do some serious research in this area.
When Hecker personally plays games, he ignores Achievements -- so why wa he even interested in this topic? When trying to raise his daughter, Hecker read a bunch of child development books, including Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards. In it, Kohn essentially argues that Skinnerian psychology and "pop behavioralism" -- the idea of manipulating people through giving them rewards. Behaviorists disagree and the two schools of thought argue with one another really immaturely and psychology is hardly the most rigorous science in the world, but it's all we've got. And right now, a fair amount of psych research seems to suggest that, in Hecker's words, "extrinsic motivators can...decrease intrinsic motivation on interesting tasks."
For example, one study had two different groups of kids tasked with drawing pictures. One group was rewarded with candy, one group wasn't. The next day, the kids were asked to draw pictures again; the kids who received the candy didn't draw anything, and the kids who hadn't received anything kept drawing pictures. Another experiment had three groups of college students tasked with solving some logic puzzles in a room filled with magazines and TV and other distracting stuff. One group was asked to try and solve the puzzle, and was given praise. One group was paid money after attempting the puzzle. The control group was given nothing but the puzzle. When the researchers left the room and observed the subjects, the ones who had been praised either verbally or monetarily ignored the puzzle and started reading the magazines, and the control group went back to the puzzle.
Even Pizza Hut's "Book It" program, wherein kids get a free pizza for every book they read, has the opposite effect: the kids grow to like the pizza because that's the reward, but they grow to hate the thing they had to do to get the pizza.
Hecker briefly ran through the different types of rewards: expected vs unexpected, informational ("you killed five orcs") vs controlling ("you killed three orcs, just like you should have"),
endogenous (get a book for reading a book) vs exogenous (get money for reading a book), and so on.
Even with all of the catty disagreements between the behavioralists and the antibehavioralists, both groups agree on two fundamental things:
1. For interesting tasks,
tangible, expected, contingent rewards reduce intrinsic motivation.
2.
Verbal, unexpected, informational feedback increases intrinsic motivation.
Even if these are the only things psychologists agree on, these are huge statements. Hecker says normal game motivators are built on extrinsic, expected, contingent rewards, "and that's pretty scary to me."
Hecker showed a brief clip from Jesse Schell's popular/terrifying DICE talk -- specifically, the part where Schell tries to put a happy face on the Farmville-esque metagaming that might one day pervade every aspect of our daily lives. Schell tried to argue that if we know our grandkids will be able to see all the books we've read and things we've done, then maybe that would encourage us to be better people.
Hecker countered that many studies have shown that when you know you're under surveillance, you act worse, not better. Hecker also countered a point made by Raph Koster that we don't have any problem with giving external rewards in real life -- paying a kid for getting good grades, for instance. Hecker again pointed out that studies show giving cash to kids for grades will make their grades go down, compared to kids who just get good grades for the sake of getting good grades.
People are focusing on these bullshit reward systems, without understanding the data, and the data seems to strongly suggest that these reward systems are bad. In games, these rewards are part of the basic feedback of the game, so it's possible to implement these sorts of harmful rewards without thinking about it. "We need to think about it," Hecker cautioned.
At this point, Hecker pointed out that most of the rewards he'd been talking about were attached to intrinsically interesting tasks, like solving puzzles or reading books or whathaveyou. Giving players extrinsic rewards for dull tasks, however -- Hecker didn't mention FarmVille here, but it definitely came to mind -- is a whole other can of worms.
"If you are intentionally making dull games with variable ratio extrinsic motivators to separate people from their money," Hecker said, "you have my pity."
Applause.
Not only that, but Hecker pointed that that studies have shown having a lot of money doesn't even exponentially increase happiness, so if you're just interested in getting your players addicted so you can get rich, "you're wasting your fucking life."
Thinkers like Aristotle, Rosseau, and
Csikszentmihali all separately agree that true satisfaction in life and work comes from the actual act of doing things for yourself, not from pleasing others or doing stuff for the rewards you'll get.
Hecker switched to what he called "the doomsday slide," a worst-case-scenario of what you might accidentally do if you're interested in making a rewarding game.
You try make an intrinsically interesting game, but you add extrinsic motivators because you think it'll make your game even better. This destroys intrinsic motivation to play your game. What Hecker calls "metrics fetishism" leads you to design dull tasks based around extrinsic motivators, and since
women lose even more intrinsic motivation than men do when given extrinsic motivators, you're suddenly making games targeted solely at males aged 18-35. Which is sort of where games are now, anyway.
But what if you like achievements? One might argue that if you don't like Achievements, you could just ignore them. Unfortunately, Hecker illustrated, it isn't that simple. Hecker's colleage Casey Muratori pointed out the problem of playing Gears of War online. You can only get Achievements in ranked matches, which means that all the good players play ranked matches so they can get Achievements. Since your friends can't follow you into ranked matches, you have to jump through a bunch of ludicrous hoops to get your friend into the same server as you. The entire player experience has been warped, almost solely because of Achievements.
But what if you think Achievements encourage players to try wacky new methods of playing, like trying to get through the first level using only a knife? Historically, gamers have been doing this sort of thing for years now, without needing gold stars as incentive. The guy who did the Super Mario Bros 3 speedrun didn't do it for an Achievement.
Even if you're forced to use extrinsic motivators (as of now, all XBLA games must have Achievements in order to pass certification), Hecker suggests that you can do certain things in order to mitigate the damage to the player's intrinsic motivation. Don't make a huge deal out of the motivators, make them as unexpected as possible ("this is really hard," Hecker admitted), use absolute rather than relative measures (don't grade your player on a curve -- tell them they've killed five orcs, not that some dude in Korea killed 6 orcs), use informational rewards rather than controlling rewards, and make your rewards as endogenous as possible. If you're giving the player an Achievement for killing a bunch of dudes with a sword, give them a cooler sword rather something totally unrelated.
Hecker ended his talk with a call to action: the industry needs to start studying the long-term impact of Achievements on players. Developers also need to be better versed in the literature and more thoughtful about extrinsic motivators. Even the wording of Achievements can make a huge difference on how they're perceived, and so developers need to be extremely careful and thoughtful.
Most of the audience questions that followed significantly muddied the issue, further underscoring Hecker's desire for more research. How does the concept of a score gel with the idea of external rewards? If the whole point of playing soccer is to get the highest score, does that mean that the game would be better without scores? Where do you draw the line?
Nobody seemed to have any definite answers.
Contest:
10:20 AM on 03.12.2010
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Whoever thought of the idea of achievements for the 360 should be given a gold medal for sucking in more people to buy more games just for the sake of accomplishment's sake and E-penis.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html
Here's a TED talk about a lot of the same things.
Have a reward mechanic; levelling up, world progression, high score, whatever. By all means. If it's a game you pretty much have to or it isn't a game.
However, make it the solitary focus, to the detriment of enjoyment of videogames in other respects and brother, I don't know what you have, but you sure as hell don't have a good videogame.
Want proof that the forced implementation of Trophies/Achievements is bad? BioShock. The final cutscene was utterly ruined by three of them popping up, taking several seconds each and utterly ruining my immersion in the story.
If their was an option to delete all my Trophies and disable the function permanently, I'd be all over it.
/Opinion
What I don't understand is why all achievements aren't "secret achievements" like plot related achievements. Like, rather than looking through the list and finding out that you have to knife 57 people to get the "Dude Knifer" achievement, wouldn't it be cooler to just do it because you wanted to, and then get the unexpected reward?
In short: I truly believe achievements are one of the best things to happen this generation. They are like a game on top of the games. I don't really care about my gamerscore, it's not about that for me, it's about the extra incentive and challenges that are added to the core gameplay of any given title.
He's treating achievements like their nicotine.
"achievements for the 360 should be given a gold medal for sucking in more people to buy more games just for the sake of accomplishment's sake"
That is all they are. A way to get players to buy and play games more frequently on their console. This shouldn't be an issue.
1) You feel like you have to go out of your way up to some point to complete them while
2) At most what they will do for you inside the game is unlock "bonus material" and
3) At worst they just inflate a worthless number that will be made void with the next generation of consoles.
I think you can turn off the notifier for when you obtain achievements...
You can turn off popups. Just go into your systems menu.
WISH GRANTED.
Dynasty Warrior Empires did something like this with their in game 'objectives' (They had their own achivements, but they were not interesting). They would task you with things to do like "kill 1000 men without taking any damage" and rewarded you with points to buy little background things, or voices for custom characters. Integrate the 'objectives' with the 'trophies' and you have an intrinsically motivating system right?
I have been playing both Dante's Inferno on the Xbox and God of War Collection on the PS3. I recently beat Dante's Inferno, but I want to get all the achievements. This is going to require a second playthrough. In the "good old days" before achievements, I'd replay games like this multiple times for fun and it would be just enjoyable. Now, since the REAL reason I'm replaying is to get achievements, the game isn't fun. In fact, I don't even WANT to play it again, even though I thought the game was fun and pleasing. The pull of achievements made my 2nd Dante's Inferno playthrough horrible, because it got to where I was ONLY replaying it to get achievements.
Compare this to God of War. Unlike Achievements, I really don't give a crap about my Trophy collection. I just don't like Sony's system for measuring achievement. However, that means that, even though this is like the 6th time I've run through God of War, I'm playing through it again for the GAME, not for the ACHIEVEMENTS/TROPHIES. My attitude has been completely different, focusing more on "I'm going to enjoy this game" verses "I need 20 Cyclops Eyes." It's a richer gaming experience.
While I will agree with the CONCEPT of achievements (rewarding players for, well, achieving something, like running through Dead Space with just one gun), the Skinnerian psychology plays true here: they are causing me to hate my games. I'd run through RE4 back in the day limiting myself to, say, just the starting pistol, just because I'd like to challenge myself. If they added an achievement for that, however, would I still enjoy it? Probably not.
Just my own personal observation in my own gaming habits. I've noticed that, like the Dead Space one gun example, if the game is good enough usually that tends to negate the Achievement fun-hating influence. However, if the game is just decent (like Dante), it can ruin it completely.
My problem with his logic is that in an environment where extrinsic motivation is a constant, then the scenario where intrinsic motivation is reduced when the rewards are removed is a moot point -- the rewards are never removed.
The onus here really falls on MS & Sony who have instituted these standards, and the optimal time to have made this call to arms was before this became a condition of approval for console games submitted by developers.
That being said, he really does make a great point regarding how developers can at least make their achievements/trophies less transactional and more surprising. The best trophy in Uncharted 2 was the Marco Polo achievement, which was play/exploration based. What made it effective was that I hadn't heard about it prior to playing, thankfully.
But even this small sliver of control that devs have over this problem is wiped out when you consider that you have access to the listings for most games' achievements/trophies before they're even released. Gamers are already preparing to get their extrinsic rewards before they've even booted the game up.
Also, studying something like motivation is such a slippery thing to quantify when you take into account the Hawthorne effect. You're not getting an accurate picture of someone's native behavior. Great post!
People say "just ignore them"... but that's difficult to do when you get the ding sound when playing and wonder what you just got... so of course you look only to see that you should do some really dumb thing in order to get some other trophy. There is also a frustration factor when they don't work correctly (Heavy Rain) and people aren't given trophies they earned.
... so many problems with trophies... I would honestly just turn them off and have a big "opted out" on my PSN profile.
I almost wish achievements had never been invented. Seems to me like it's one more measuring stick for some people to compare how much of a "real gamer" they are. Granted that is a minority of gamers but it's an element that, while I don't really mind achievements, they do little to further my gaming experience.
Except the Bad Nanny achievement. I was damn proud to get that one.
I am more likely to start up a new game that HAS Trophies than I am to begin an old one from before they existed.
This only applies to STARTING the game though, as a good game will hook me regardless of any extrinsic rewards.
I HAVE been hoping that they would patch MGS4 with trophies for quite some time though. Strangely, I guess I was hoping for a reason to go back and play it (as if my new surround sound system isn't enough).
So because achievements make you play games you do not like, in addition to pointless grinding they are the best things to happen ? I really do not get why people want "achievements" for doing dumb tedious tasks.
The worst part about achievements is the deranged people playing solely for them, and when you are unlucky enough to join a server with such people it completely ruins the gaming experience.
Id addition to that some games have begun handing out better items when you get your "achievement" adding even more focus on doing the same thing again and again until you finally make it, even though it does not make you a more skilled player. Achievements annoy me, and I think its extremely ironical to call them "Achievements" when they are anything but that
However, if I wasn't a bad enough perfectionist as it is, the achievement system made me even worse.
Achievements aren't necessarily important to me by themselves, but when they encourage me to try out new play styles, I'm usually better for it. I'm the type of gamer who sticks with what is comfortable in pretty much every class-based shooter, RPG, etc., and being encouraged to play as a sniper or be a wizard every once in a while makes me a better gamer all around. Sure, I could do it without the added incentive of "Achievement Unlocked," but, as was mentioned, sometimes I don't think of these things on my own.
Plus, I find that my friends and I complete for achievements/trophies, which adds something to games that otherwise wouldn't be there. Sure, I could just TELL my friends that I did such-and-such and they didn't, but having proof in the form of an achievement/trophy certainly adds to the competitive nature of some games, especially the single-player ones.
It's one of the reasons why I love the Wii so much more at the moment.
I found it really spoilt a lot of game play experiences trying to jump through hoops that are unrelated to the game to get some points added to an arbitrary number.
They aren't harmful to the player but they are damaging the game play experience.
I don't really care either way about achievements, but I find it irritating to get achievements for just doing things you have to do in the game anyway ("Woo! You reached the second level -- have 25 points"). Achievements that encourage to try something you might not otherwise bother with are a very good idea, though.
would i still play pong or pacman with out achievements now. Probably not.
Games evolved, and became about "finishing" a quest and beating a boss. I'm not saying that this is better or worse, just the natural progression of things.
So now we've incorporated both schools of thought into the gaming experience. Get through the levels, beat the boss, and have a score.
In my youth, I used to frequent a local arcade and spend countless hours at a particular Missile Command machine. I was pretty decent, often getting the highest score, and soon found myself in competition with another who would leapfrog past me. I would then beat their score, they would beat mine, and the competition continued like this for some time. I never met this person, but I'd like to think that they were enjoying our little competition as much as I was.
Were there people who would play that Missile Command machine just for fun? Sure. Were there people trying to get the high score and beat myself and this mystery gamer? Absolutely. Did I swell with geek pride when I managed to top that list? Hell yes.
Games today are just incorporating this old-school sensibility. Sure, you can play a game just for fun regardless of score. There's nothing wrong with that. You can play in an attempt to get the "high score" (1000 gamerpoints), and you can enjoy that quest for more points. You can get the highest score, achieve the toughest achievements, just to show off to your friends or the countless people you may cross paths with online.
Going for a high score isn't new to games. In fact, it's been the driving force since gaming started. We may call the points "achievements" or "trophies" now, but at the end of the day it's the same concept we've been playing with for generations.
its the game itself that should bring me back to play again. not some meaningless "treat"
when i find a game i like, ill try different things anyway, i dont need someone to tell me to try something their way just to unlock a trophy.
If games had, I don't know, 3-5 trophies for the whole game, then I might care.
For instance: Beat the game on any difficulty -> Get a trophy
Beat the game on the hardest difficulty -> Get a trophy
Complete everything you can possibly do in the game -> Get a trophy
Also, having the trophy message pop up every 10 mins just ruins the atmosphere of any game.
@CaptainBus : I didn't know you could turn the trophy popups off. I think you just made my day.
That's certainly one of the reasons, but a very small one. I've been gaming for thirty years; seen many things come and go, but never anything on top of games that is quite as appealing as the notion of making you dig deeper into your games. Once upon a time, a finishing sequence and the credits signalled the end of a game, and that was it. 9 times out of 10, the endings were rubbish (I remember finishing Shinobi on the SEGA Master system, and just getting a game over screen and that was it. An achievement might have made that a little less infuriating - random example, but you get my drift), and still are pretty much to this day. At least now if you get a 75g reward for completing the game, you've got something other than the knowledge of who bought the sandwiches during developement.
I think anybody who has serious beef with achievements are perhaps taking things a little too seriously.
I agree that somebody who plays entirely for achievements is missing the point, but the extra you can get out of a game on an achievement hunt, for me at least, is a very welcome addition to gaming.
Having said all that, I do beleive that Shadowii makes a very interesting point.
I'm also not obsessed with trophies either. I mean I'll try for them but if it requires me to play the game through more than say 3 times I'll not bother with it.
This dude can dissect achievements til the cows come home, Personally, I love them, as they encourage me to play and buy more games (yes, even some crap ones too) and finish them I possible. I'd like to see his charts comparing game sales before and after the rise of achievements, but he obviously dodged that bullet.
The inclusion of trophies on PS3 is obvious. Sony saw that sales of 360 games were high because of achievements being such an integral part of Xbox Live. As such a hook, I'm sure that if you check sales of many multiformat games, 360 will come out on to of PS3 8-9 times out of 10. Sony were wise to act, especially with PS3 in last place, and as a result PS3 players also have a trophy score which they can enjoy, no matter how meta it may seem to some, and share with their friends and other gamers globally. As a badge of my gaming homour, I'll wear mine proudly. I don't find a game any less fun than I normally would, unless its crap to start with.
Its a cool system to have, one which I would have been very greatful for, back in the 16 bit era. I completed many SNES/MD games back then, but having no tangible record of it always annoyed me. Oh, Actraiser, after that hell I went through to complete you on SNES.
Be you an achivevement hunter or not, they are only a problem if you make them one. As for lists appearing online before a game launch, that's just the nature of net information at play. If you know they are out there, only your free will is making you check such lists or not, no one else.
THIS! We have always, always, always, always, always, had an Achievement-esque system. Whether it was a high score, or you and your buddy going "What if..", or a personal goal. It baffles me how Achievement/Trophies can hurt the experience at all.
The Grumbly Gamer completely echoes my view and why I feel like the argument for or against Trophies/Achievements is a piss poor debate.
I do believe achievements have negative impacts.
They have a negative impact on you, because you focus on them too much. Games have stories, multiplayer etc, focus on them intstead of achievements. Better yet, switch of the notification option, and once out of sight, they'll be out of your mind.
If you dont enable such an option, its clear to me that you really like achievements, yet just deny the fact. Ball is in your court, go play.
There's something unsettling about seeing such things pop up, letting you know that no only did the developers expect you to do it, but wanted you to do it. Suddenly its not fun and you no longer feel like you've discovered something or done something cool and unique. Its just another planned result and you're just the rat in the cage pressing the buttons in the right sequence to get some cheese.
Let me put it this way. I have played the entire original Splinter Cell game without killing anyone...except the one guy you have to kill... And I did so simply to challenge myself. Ubisoft Montreal likely did not intend people to do so, which made it that much more fun. Anyway, but then comes Chaos Theory.
Don't get me wrong. Chaos Theory is an awesome game, but if there was one thing that I found detrimental it was the inclusion of a score at the end of each level. No longer did I feel like I was Sam Fisher making decisions in the moment, but rather making decisions based on the fact that I didn't want to get points deducted on some final tallying screen.
Its that feeling that Big Brother is watching you, grading you, and critiquing you when the experience should be you and the character you're controlling become one. It sours the overall advancement and you start following the piper's tune rather than your own.
Anyway, for an industry that's trying to move beyond the 'toy' tag, achievements and trophies are just ensuring that the industry won't get there any time soon. The value of the game should be defined by the actual playing of the game and not by some external point system dictating HOW you end up playing and experiencing the game.
@ChaosTeaCup
I hope I never play a game I hate or play in a style that I don't care to use just for the sake of some paltry reward system.
I don't see how doing so is a good thing. Such a case would, to me, mark a point where I no longer possess the willingness to dictate my own experience and motivations. At such a point, I will have to lay down my controller and walk away.
If we do things we don't like for rewards, why should getting rewards for things we DO like be any different? I'd really like to see more info on the statistics he's quoting, I have a good feeling that they're bullshit.